For most of us, this was our first holiday season selling on Merch. I’m not really sure what I expected from the holiday sales rush. I expected a small increase…but nothing like what actually happened.

From November to December, I nearly quadrupled my sales. I sold 4x as many shirts sold, and made 4x the profit.

I still can’t upload any shirts, so I’m sure January will be a considerably slower month for me, but overall, December was a great month.

Let’s talk about December 2016.

Previous Income Reports

If you haven’t been following along, you should get up to speed by reading the previous income reports first.

Now, if I create a design similar to another shirt, and those are selling for $16.99 – I’ll price mine at $16.99 too. Unless my design is significantly better, I price competitively more often than not.

Because I’m still in the 25 tier, I have a limited selection of designs I can upload. Designs that don’t sell, or don’t sell “well enough” for this time of year have been removed to make way for better designs, and most of the ones I have left are priced at 19.99, and are selling consistently every few days.

Copyright Infringement Scare

Last month was a scary month for us all. Amazon was swinging the mighty ban hammer left and right for a couple weeks.

Hundreds of thousands of shirts were removed. Hundreds of accounts were terminated overnight, with no chance of retrieving them.

Large accounts, small accounts, new accounts, old accounts – it didn’t matter. If you infringed on anyone’s copyright, you could be the next.

Guys – you need to double-check each and every design before you upload them to Merch. No exceptions. Use TESS, enter the phrase, and see if someone’s filed for it.

I ended up removing half my designs last month. I only have 12 designs live right now. Merch is no longer letting you put “Made in the USA” in your bullet points or descriptions – and I had to remove several of my best-selling designs to avoid getting my account terminated. I plan on re-uploading all of them with updated bullet points, but I’m still waiting for uploads to resume like everyone else.

Can I Upload New Designs?

Nope, I haven’t had the ability to upload/edit shirts since December 4th.

I’ve sold 231 total shirts in 4 months on Merch, and I’m still in the 25 design tier.

No one really knows when the freeze will be over, or when Amazon will start tiering users back up. The last thing we’ve heard from Amazon is we should expect another response “in January”.

Whether that means they are opening Merch up to new members, implementing new features in the Merch portal, tiering sellers up, or letting us upload designs again – we aren’t sure. What I can tell you is that daily upload limits are coming. At the 25 tier, I’ll only be able to upload 2 shirts a day.

I’ve got over 100 designs sitting in draft, ready to upload. If I’m really limited to uploading 2 designs a day, it would take me almost 2 months to upload what I currently have.

So, instead of creating over the past month, I’ve spent most of December working a little side project for Merch sellers.

It’s called Merch Ready Designs.

Merch Ready Designs

MerchReadyDesigns.com is an e-commerce shop where you can purchase professional, ready-to-upload Merch by Amazon t-shirt designs.

All designs are “Merch Ready”, meaning once you purchase a design, they will be downloaded in 4500x5400px dimensions as transparent .png files.

When I created Merch Ready Designs, I had one goal in mind: To make it as simple as possible for anyone to get started with Merch by Amazon.

Instead of spending time researching ideas, finding designers, negotiating prices, or creating your own designs, you can purchase ours pre-made Merch by Amazon designs. Literally all you have to do is browse our store, find a few designs, and then you can download them immediately after purchase. Every single design is a design I’d upload to my own account.

All designs are:

Less than $10

Created by professional t-shirt designers

Copyright & trademark free

Correct Merch dimensions (4500x5400px)

Transparent .png file format

Downloaded instantly after purchase

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Merch Ready Designs was created to help anyone at any stage of their Merch journey.

I would love for you guys to visit my site and see some of the designs we have to offer. I think you’ll be impressed.